


A Sea of Diamonds and The Tears of a Dying Humanity

by picassobaby



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 23:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11885499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picassobaby/pseuds/picassobaby
Summary: Jongin had been excited about the prospect of modeling for art's sake. Until Sehun happened and he sees himself in the form of art and movement.





	A Sea of Diamonds and The Tears of a Dying Humanity

**Author's Note:**

> If it ain't obvious enough, I have a thing for artist x muse stories because 1) I miss painting, 2) I hadn't had a muse in 5 years, 3) This is the only way for me to be connected to my past self.
> 
> More or less, writing this is self-indulgent. I want to let go but it's a little too difficult when for majority of my life my mind was set on being an artist (simply because everyone around me told me I was, the entire time I'd been growing up).
> 
> I am basically at that point in life when I question my own self and my passion but I'm glad I still have writing (and fandom) to accompany me through this dark time.

Loud clanks of wood panels banging against concrete can be heard from outside the several studios as he walked along the halls. In the building that houses the Fine Arts Department, floors were designated for different purposes specific to varying classes. The 9th floor is exclusively for closed out drawing classes such as Anatomy, Life Drawing, and in-house free rental studios for students who need the space. Sehun makes it in time before his reservation was lost. He puts all of his materials down and sets up his table. The model for the day should be getting ready at the moment, and judging from the pile of papers stacked on another desk, he assumed his mentor has already arrived.  
 

He hasn’t  finished setting up his work table when the model steps out of the curtained make-shift dressing area and the professor starts enthusiastically recounting about where he found the perfect model for his final year series. His peripheral serves him a nice, young, tanned male with virgin hair and a fringe too long it covers up a bit of his eyes. There were movements and the shirt was off, followed by the raw denim jeans, after he’d kicked off his sneakers. Sehun is left quiet with the casually naked boy in the middle of the room.  
 

No doubt, his professor was right. The model is perfect.  
 

Sehun starts working on the task at hand and gradually sinks into his zone. Graphite dragged against paper, light lines marking the length of the body of the subject, proportions so perfect it was almost too easy. This boy had the nicest thighs, Sehun thinks, the bulk of muscle looked firm and the way their lines curved and transitioned into his knees down to his legs and calves felt mesmerizing to draw.  
 

He shakes out of his trance. Sehun begins to vaguely add in details starting from the way the boy’s hair fell over his forehead, how his eyes seems to be vacant and deep in thought all the same, the natural plump lips, and the graceful form his body seemed to naturally fall into. This draft didn’t need to be perfect, but how does one help the results of a subject that is perfection personified.  
 

The moment he’s satisfied with the sketch, he takes a nice look at the page and compares it with the real thing. It was good. Too good he second guesses himself. He’d never drawn a human being this close to the figures of the Renaissance Movement—except in some areas he’d skipped. Drawing people is a skill he’s been gifted at birth, safe to say, although it is not what he’s most passionate about to pursue a career in it. He won’t deny that it helps a lot in the development of his own style.  
 

Professor Lee, one of the institution’s pillars, is an old man who has worked in the art industry of South Korea for as long as he could remember. He didn’t have a glamorous life but the beauty of living while surrounded by art itself had been a priceless, never-ending pleasure he would not exchange for anything. He’s known to be generous in giving encouragement and constructive criticism - and students love him for it. He was the type of professor who is quiet, but his presence itself is regarded in utmost respect. Like every other student, Sehun doesn’t fail to express his appreciation whenever the old man would give him a pat on the back and give him a word or two about his improvements  or what he’s done good.  
 

Professor Lee comes back to check on him and to remind him to take a break. Sehun is about to approach him for comments on his sketch when he notices the tanned boy get off of the platform and put his jeans back on, stretching his limbs as graceful as ever. He isn’t sure if it’s just him seeing this all play out in slow motion as the lump in his throat forms.  
 

The boy catches his gaze.  
 

They acknowledge each other with polite smiles. Weird that Sehun has trouble looking directly at the model’s face now that he’s half dressed.  
 

Their heads turn at the sound of the professor’s voice, deep and warm in a way that it feels like talking to your own grandfather. The kindness is real, the look is sincere, and the way he has with words never fails to strike a chord or two of inspiration. Sehun hesitates to hand over his sketchpad but his mentor snatches it away as the subject makes his way over to the professor’s table as well. Curious.  
 

Professor Lee comments casually on the strong points of the composition, applauds his technique, and laments on how Sehun would be translating this once the canvas output is done. It makes Sehun fidget in his spot, as the model preens over and shyly smiles at what he sees. The model throws in a rather flattered compliment at how he looks on that paper, which earns them both a teasing chuckle from the professor.  
 

They get pushed out of the room to take a breather.  
 

Their eyes meet again and this  time, he smiles and Sehun forgets about the expanse of bronze skin. There’s only bright eyes, teeth perfectly aligned, and a genuine smile to boot.  
 

Sehun grabs for his cigarettes as he pulls on his flimsy shirt before they make their way out into the halls, towards the elevators.  
 

The model introduces himself as Jongin.  
 

There’s now a name to the face (and body) that he had been focused on for the past 45 minutes.  
 

Conversation is minimal and the silence is easy. But the look of admiration in Jongin’s eyes does not fade away. He is ironically talkative despite the mysterious aura. It was as if he couldn’t hold himself back on letting the artist know about his long time fascination with art and how he wouldn’t seem to overcome it.  
 

He wanted to know how it feels to have this kind of talent at birth.  
 

The look Sehun gives him is difficult to read.  
 

With a shy grimace, Jongin explains about his childhood dreams of becoming an artist and how it’s not been kind. He says he had believed that practice will get him there but it gets a lot discouraging after attending enough workshops. He says his outputs are enough clue that he's not meant to hold the paintbrush.  
 

Sehun wishes more people were like Jongin, very understanding of what art means for culture and humanity. He lights a cigarette when they reach the smoking area at  the back of the building. It was only occupied by three other people, each in their separate worlds. Jongin lights his own stick as well.  
 

He continues to listen, at how much passion Jongin exudes just talking about the dream life he has in his head, surrounded by art and the complexities of the human condition that enables its creativity.  
 

The ethereal face, the body sculpted by the Renaissance movement, and the state of mind that knows no limits makes Jongin perfect in Sehun’s eyes.  
 

It makes Sehun quiver, the thought of wanting to drown in the presence of this Jongin. They’ve only met a good hour before where they are now, yet it’s dangerously magnetic.  
 

There is a tiny flame in Sehun’s gut that tells him it would be surreal.  
 

As they walk back into the building after the cigarettes have perished, Sehun asks Jongin how he feels about being his muse.  
 

Neither Sehun and Jongin know the boundaries of this relationship.  
 

They dive in head first.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
Sehun lives in a two-bedroom apartment down a little distance off-campus. He had trouble with roommates who didn’t like the mess living with a scatter-brained artist entails so he’d been alone since his last attempt at co-inhabiting about two years ago.  
 

The smell of turpentine and wood glue fill the spaces. The tool box is out as Sehun stretches the canvas over custom-sized frames for his commissions. Jongin is overwhelmed.  
 

As a spectator, he watches Sehun move in the confines of his own place. There’s a cigarette in between his lips, the smoke dissipating gently into nothing above his head. He is topless and a thin sheen of sweat has adorned his torso. His back muscles flex, along with his arms, as the cloth is stretched to its limits and stapled over the edges of the frame. His brows are furrowed as he checks the flatness of the plane. He slathers the primer over the prepared canvas and moves on to working on the next blank slate.  
 

Sehun acknowledges Jongin’s presence and stalks over to him. The tables may have turned in their state of undress but the appreciation is the same. He tours the honey-skinned boy around the premise of a toxic little household with emphasis on which chemicals are flammable and where they are stored. Jongin doesn’t ask why he still smokes indoors.  
 

Settling took about a little over a week. Jongin is often in the makeshift studio Sehun had created of the supposed second room, if not curiously exploring different media, he’s watching Sehun dabble into his pieces. He works differently when in his home, the boy notes.  
 

At the same time, he finds little things about the artist that develop how they move around each other in the small space. Presence is the biggest key between the two of them. Wherever Sehun is, Jongin should be there too. It’s like having an extension of yourself as you voice out your own thoughts and ideas. They aren’t always speaking, sometimes, looks are enough. Eventually, interaction evolved into touches and yearning, and even more touches.  
 

Jongin likes hand holding and legs entangled. Sehun likes soft caresses and lingering gazes. Gazes that Jongin would respond to with feline grace as he squirms in his seat or beneath Sehun. Neither of them deny the inevitable undercurrents of desire in their veins. It’s a cruel little consequence but it doesn’t scare them, doesn’t make them think twice. Sehun would not be pulled into a delusion of indifference in the presence of the very person whom had ignited the new approach to art that he’s been practicing. He looks forward to what life has next after all these. What if it was the last of him and his premature career? He’ll burnout before he makes a name for himself, he thinks.  
 

Mundane. Art has become the center of Jongin’s life during this period of it and he's having the time of his life. Sehun has learned a new way of exploring the very fine subject of not only his paintings but also his fantasies of rainy afternoons and shared glasses of flavoured vodka.  
 

He had become the artist's staple plus one to every exhibit and showing he attends. One would think they would shy away from the questions about their relationship but they don't, neither do they really answer. Shared looks and meaningful smiles were all that there is and it's more than enough. People will always be ready to assume the most romanticized scenarios of Jongin's involvement in Sehun's creative process.  
 

It was almost transcendental. Sehun & Jongin. Nobody thought to explain how complete strangers become inseparable. Fluid as neon psychedelia, saturated, acidic. Floating in the surreal in between of where Jongin's hyper realism meets Sehun's impressionistic little daydreams.  
 

Sehun’s whole person is obsessed.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
He clearly remembers the first night Jongin had spent in his bed, the day he moved in, looking as good as his intentions. He learns that there is no shame in forgoing subtlety for transparent passion.  
 

Jongin’s lips taste of warm cinnamon, he thinks. Warm like the honey golden skin that blushes a tad of old rose in the sunlight. Sehun has the remnants of mint cigarettes and chocolate Irish cream whiskey on his mouth. The dips and contours of their bodies have been explored too many times but Sehun’s hands are calloused and dry, with skin peeling off like the changing seasons in Spring, just like how Jongin wants them against his soft, firm epidermis.  
 

Languid and rough. Aggressive, possessive, and exciting. It felt better than good. Filthy and dark. Pushing at the borders and wondering where the other will cross the line for hell to freeze over.  
 

In the wake of dawn as Jongin sleeps, Sehun draws more of him. There's a worn out sketch pad by the night stand.  
 

Some days, the pictures were of angelic light. The droop of Jongin's eyelids and the soft shadow of his lashes over his cheeks, the parted lips, soft breaths.  
 

Other days, when the skies aren't dotted with stars and the soft patter of rain is insistent against the glass window panes, Sehun drowns in the afterglow. The lines of Jongin's body curve more sensually, provocative, more shadows and less contrast. The soft smiles become illusions of smirks, hazy eyes turn sharp, and hair pushed back in the throes of forceful tugs.  
 

Kisses were mere bodily experiences. Sex, a natural occurrence between catharsis and self-indulgence.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
Sehun lets go of color and oils for black ink. His triptych series on The Baphomet was the last piece Jongin had seen him work on using the tiniest of brushes. The details had been intricate and the colors were reminiscent of the 60's movement. The change was akin to death.  
 

The minimalist approach to portraiture is not new, was not innovative either. It merely showcases the skill of an artist to show a complete sense or evoke a meaning for an audience to relate or not relate to with the littlest amount of lines he puts on paper.  
 

Ink blots splattering from the pressure of trying to make thicker groves, strength and expectations uncontrollable, sleek and parched thin lines, unnamed shapes perfecting the form. Pressed without inhibitions against the pristine surface of watercolor paper.  
 

Jongin never knows when Sehun captured these moments of his but it sends him reeling. Like the tingles on his back when Sehun drives at dawn, too fast to be legal, too slow for the burn to ache in his loins, but absolute in presence that you will remember the way it felt even after it's all over. Pretty much like the orgasm he falls into while Sehun watched him play with himself.  
 

He stays fascinated.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
The night is passing with Jongin in Sehun's embrace. Skin moist, fingers lost in between damp locks, legs entangled, and bodies pressed. The softness of their kisses were inebriated, the slow movements were passionate, and Sehun's hands all over were burning his skin.  
 

Sehun could not get enough of his lips. Needy and eager as his. Warm breaths milling into each other's mouths. He licks into the fire, igniting the brewing warmth in the depths of his personal hell. Jongin keeps indulging, gives and gives and gives while Sehun takes and takes and takes.  
 

If it was what it meant to keep the fire alive, the muse would bathe himself in kerosene. Maybe it was beyond that, maybe it wasn't all physical, and maybe Sehun didn't need to know.  
 

Jongin was falling apart at the frayed edges of his person as he finds purpose in being the subject of Sehun's flourishing career.  
 

Maybe, having all of Sehun to himself was the reward.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
Late mornings were warmer yet it doesn't stop Sehun from pressing closer and pulling Jongin tighter into his body. Days begin with kisses almost the same way they'd ended the previous night. Except with more hope and more intent. Sehun always wants to share a look with Jongin as if checking to see if he's still really there. Some mornings, he would let it slip, but Jongin says nothing of it and simply smiles. It's enough.  
 

 _Don't go._  
  
 

* * *

  
  
Sehun derives a lot from experience. Who knows what it does to people, really. At some point he had lost himself in the expectations and image that the community had built him up to be and his only refuge was Jongin.  
 

Jongin who lets Sehun be. Jongin who is the only constant. Jongin whom Sehun will drown himself in over and over and over as the endless sea of who he is that continuously brings Sehun to the brink of his last breath to pull him out in time in a different place.  
 

Still, he doesn't swim in the body of Jongin's infinite sea, he floats and the winds aren't in  favor of bringing him ashore.  
 

It remains perfect that way.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
Eventually, Sehun takes a step back and looks at everything he’d been through and done. At the height of his existence with Jongin never leaving, he drinks in the reality that between he and the boy he’s memorized on canvas, they have not equally grown.  
 

The portraits, the human body—Jongin’s perfect form, and the theory of displacement.  
 

Rushed, darkened sketches, desaturated watercolours, neon poster colours, and heavy oil paint on canvas.  
 

Realism to impressionism to surrealism.  
 

When the mask of self-preservation is shed and he realizes that Jongin knows everything behind it, all that he was, is, and will be, but the artist barely knows what else there is for the muse he had trapped in his hunger for endless inspiration, he holds his breath and dives into the sea.  
 

 _Jongin._  
 

Jongin.  
 

A dancer in the moonlight. The premier danseur. Ruined by his own passion. Had been the best in his own art, but never found contentment.  
 

That evening, he holds the boy in the most possessive embrace he could muster.  
 

Underneath it all, Jongin feels the tinge of protectiveness in the kisses pressed against his nape and shoulder blades. Skin to skin, bodies bared for hands to map out.  
 

Sehun promises to himself that tomorrow will be different.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
It takes a week before Jongin notices the lack of progress in Sehun’s current piece. It was a full width acrylic mural for a boutique hotel chain. Pretty commercial when he thought about it but it was work, and it didn’t require him to talk with countless people who try to pseudo-intellect talk with him on their feelings about his work.  
 

Jongin feels his heart implode at the indications of an artist’s block.  
 

Sehun was in bed taking an afternoon nap instead of his usual seat in front of a canvas in the studio. He looked peaceful, his skin was glowing with help from the diffused sunlight slithering through the layers of curtains.  
 

He was soft, child-like in slumber, it almost convinces Jongin to hold back. Yet the subtle lines in between his eyebrows were enough telltale sign that Sehun had been deep in thought before escape took him to sleep. Jongin’s finger tips lightly touch over the other’s chest, slow and followed by sweet little wet kisses. He moves down Sehun’s torso, making slow trails as he appreciates every curve and surface his mouth could define.  
 

Sehun stirs awake when Jongin’s weight presses against his thighs. His furrowed brows relax and his face instantly turns into that of contentment and curiosity. He stares right into Jongin’s eyes, though sleepy and dazed. His hands seek Jongin’s to pull him down for a tender kiss.  
 

He’s still the same, Jongin tells himself. Still as eager, and dare he say, loving. He distracts himself and gives his everything into the liplock. If he couldn’t say it, might as well leave it up to the language they know best. Maybe then Sehun will understand.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin pleads, for what he isn’t sure.  
 

The boy is falling apart right in front of his eyes.  
 

“Jongin,” his voice was low, heavy, sad and lost, “I’m so sorry.”  
 

Sehun hasn’t touched a single work in progress in the span of a month. Naturally, Jongin asks him about it.  
 

He confesses that he no longer wants to paint for anyone else, locks his arms around Jongin’s waist and buries his face into the firm abdominals. When Jongin does not respond, he looks up and looks at him with bittersweet apologetic eyes.  
 

Sehun is tired of being called an artist when he’s but an asset to a gallery that houses modern and contemporary art. He had been reduced to the signature that people clamor over to add to their collection. They no longer think about the work, they no longer look at what it’s about, they merely talk of how proud they are of the young boy who was a fresh graduate when they first encountered his work, and how he’s now become one of the big names in the business.  
 

He doesn’t want to be a big name in the business. He doesn’t want to be merely business. But what else is there to become in the time of consumerism and hype?  
 

Jongin listens as he tells him that no matter how good you are, how passionate, how much of yourself you give into your craft, it will all boil down to how much cash you rake in.  
 

Funny how Jongin had been in that same story before an injury took all of it away. He should know how it feels. For some reason, he couldn’t find it in himself to remember how it had been. His pains no longer resided in his mind, nor in his heart, and he feels severely empty.  
 

Sehun continues to hold onto him.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
He is no longer floating. Jongin had consumed him wholly and he doesn’t want to be saved. His art had served its time and no longer has purpose. Sehun feels shame slowly take down his spine and he tries harder to hold onto Jongin.  
 

Jongin is the enraged flame that had been pacified by time. The encapsulated entity that totals the entire career of the artist he had become and fallen from. The anger had calmed just as he had exhausted his self-worth. He wonders where they’ll pick up for each other.  
 

 

  
_Don’t go._  
 

 

  
But what was there to stay for?  
 

 

  
_I’m sorry._  
 

 

  
It isn’t his or anybody’s fault.  
 

 

  
_Stay._  
 

 

  
Sehun swims up to the surface to breathe like how he remembers vaguely from his past.  
 

But this time around, like fish out of water, he suffocates.  
 

He couldn’t escape the sea.  
 

 

  
_For what was and will no longer be._  
 

 

  
Sehun is nothing without Jongin.  
 

 


End file.
